Ansible Community General Collection 7.0.0 Released: Key Changes and Enhancements

Hello Ansible Enthusiasts!

We’re pleased to announce the release of Ansible Community General Collection 7.0.0, which became available on May 9, 2023. This update introduces a variety of new features, improvements, and important changes across numerous modules. Here’s a summary of what’s new in this release:

1. Breaking Changes / Porting Guide:

• Dependency Updates: If you manually installed or upgraded community.general, make sure to also install community.sap_libs if using sapcar_extract, sap_task_list_execute, or hana_query modules to ensure proper functionality.
• Module Output Changes: The ModuleHelper utility now prefixes certain output variables with an underscore when they clash with internal variables, addressing a previous bug (#5765).
• gconftool2: Adjustments have been made for handling non-existent keys, which now return null instead of an empty string (#6028).
• gitlab_runner: The default for access_level_on_creation has been updated from false to true (#6428).
• nmcli: The default for the hairpin option has changed from true to false (#6428).
• proxmox: The default for the unprivileged option has been updated from false to true (#6428).

2. Module Improvements:

• apache2_module: Added warn_mpm_absent to control warnings in edge cases (#5793).
• apt_rpm: New parameters like clean, dist_upgrade, and update_kernel for system upgrades (#5867).
• bitwarden lookup plugin: Can now retrieve secrets from custom fields and supports filtering by collection_id (#5694, #5849).
• dconf: Improved handling of boolean values and GVariant parsing (#6206, #6336).
• dnsimple: Custom User-Agent for API requests (#5927).
• gitlab_project: Added options for various access levels and topics (#5706, #5986, #6278).
• nmcli: Added new connection types and parameters (#6312, #6065).
• pipx: Added parameters for managing system-wide packages and application installations (#6308, #6212).
• redfish_command: New functionalities for BIOS and firmware updates (#4276, #5899).
• snap: Refactored to use CmdRunner for command execution (#6468).
• znode: Added use_tls for encrypted communication (#6154).

3. Bug Fixes:

• Various modules including ansible_galaxy_install, nmcli, and win_chocolatey have received bug fixes to improve stability and performance.

4. Deprecations:

• ModuleHelper: Deprecation of deps mixin in favor of deps module_utils (#6465).
• rax Modules: Multiple rax modules rely on the deprecated pyrax library and will be removed in community.general 9.0.0 (#5752).
• rhn_channel, rhn_register: These modules are deprecated due to the discontinuation of RHN and will be removed in community.general 10.0.0 (#6493).

5. New Modules:

• btrfs_info: Query btrfs filesystem info.
• gitlab_project_badge: Manage project badges on GitLab.
• keycloak_authz_authorization_scope: Manage Keycloak client authorization scopes.
• ocapi_command: Manage Out-Of-Band controllers using Open Composable API (OCAPI).

6. Documentation:

• Updates and improvements have been made to the documentation for several modules, enhancing clarity and usability.

For further details and specific information, please refer to the changelog for community.general 7.0.0.

Conclusion

Ansible Community General Collection 7.0.0 brings a host of updates, including significant module improvements, new features, and important deprecations. Key highlights include enhancements to modules like gitlab_project, new functionalities in redfish_command, and various bug fixes. For a detailed look at all changes and improvements, be sure to check out the full changelog.

Looking forward to seeing you at AnsibleFest 2023 in Boston, USA, from May 23–25, 2023. Save the date!

See also: Ansible Core 2.15.0 Beta 3 Released: Key Updates

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See also

• Ansible Install Docker: Automate Docker Installation on Linux (Complete Guide)